The MAF Blog: Worldwide Pulse

Posts Tagged ‘mission aviation fellowship’

Surviving Rainy, Swampy Air Strips

Posted on: May 17th, 2012 by Brian Shepson | Leave a comment

Nobody likes to get stranded when they are traveling by plane. A cancelled flight or mechanical failure can be frustrating beyond belief, especially when we simply want to get home to a loved one. When you are a missionary pilot flying in the jungle, those frustrations still exist.

I once went to pick up a missionary who had been serving in Ecuador for 30 years. The rainfall was so intense the previous night that the water rolled off his tin roof in one continuous, corrigated sheet for hours. With such rainfalls, getting in and out of these areas require precision, patience and careful examination.

So how do jungle pilots determine the safety of the strip’s surface while still circling overhead?

Mission Aviation Fellowship Papua Indonesia

Sheets of rain like this in Papua create spectacular rainbows, but that same water isn’t so great for grass and dirt airstrips.

One of the techniques pilots use to accomplish this is by approaching the strip at such an angle that you can catch a reflection off the standing water. Once you’ve determined that there is water, you have to next determine how deep it is. I have radioed down to the air strip and asked people to walk through the puddles to determine their depth or watched animals cross the air strip to see if they remain on top of the ground.

A soft airstrip can grab your tires and flip your plane in a split second. It’s not something you want to happen to your plane. Ruts can be even worse, forcing you off the air strip as you’re landing and sending you careening into a ditch nearby or into trees surrounding the strip.

And none of these observations are worth much if you can’t see the air strip – which is a real problem when you’re flying in the rain. Whenever rain drops cover a windshield, the rain drops wreak havoc on your depth perception. We teach our pilots to rock their head from side to side as they approach air strips to avoid this problem, enabling them to clearly perceive their depth of vision.

Observing donkeys crossing the air strip, rocking your head back and forth, and assessing an air strip’s viability for landing from the air – it’s all in a day’s work for a jungle pilot.

High Maintenance

Posted on: May 16th, 2012 by Christine Harms | 1 Comment

When my husband David puts on his old glasses, I know what that means: aircraft maintenance. In a moment, he’s transformed: off goes the pressed, white pilot shirt with captain’s bars on the shoulders, on goes the plain, blue work shirt with a few holes and the rubbery red RTV stain I can’t get out. When he comes back into the office, there will be grease and oil and, most likely, he’ll smell like gasoline. In a commercial airline scenario, you’d never catch a pilot dirtying his hands like this, but most of our guys on the Haiti program serve as both mechanics and pilots. In fact, that’s true of all our programs.

David Harms doing routine maintenance on a Cessna Caravan.

I never had a true appreciation for the intricacies of maintenance until my new role as flight scheduler required me to schedule inspections. To comply with our Aircraft Operations Manual (the “other” MAF bible), we have to make sure we don’t fly more than the prescribed fifty flight hours between inspections. Since I have the most contact with the schedule, that job naturally falls to me. But it’s not quite as easy as it looks.

“How many days does it take?” I’d ask. “Which inspection is it?” David would reply. He and our maintenance specialist, Todd, have served as my guides as I learn. “What do you mean, which inspection? There’s more than one kind?” It turns out there’s actually twenty different kinds, depending on which combination of elements are being inspected and how long it’s been since the last time it was inspected. Most take three days, but Inspections 6 and 13 take a week—as long as we have a full staff, longer if we don’t. And just for fun, Inspection 19 takes two weeks…try scheduling that two months in advance!

It’s all worth it, though: our maintenance habits are one of the greatest gifts we can give our passengers. Even in my own mind, I feel a lot better strapping my loved ones into a plane that’s been regularly cared for…after all, it’s not like our pilots can just “pull over” if it starts to smoke. Whether it’s changing an oil filter, a tire, or an engine, their training and attention to detail keep us flying safely to God’s glory. Now that’s “high” maintenance!

The Kids Talk Africa

Posted on: May 14th, 2012 by Stephanie Fuller | 3 Comments

We are leaving for the Democratic Republic of Congo in three weeks. Our shipment is completed and our suitcases are mostly packed. My husband and I are getting excited, but today I thought that I would ask my daughters what they thought about Africa. I asked the same questions to each daughter separately. What follows are my children’s thoughts on Africa.

What do you think Africa will look like?
L (age 5): I think it will have lots of trees, not very much grass, lots of kids…I think there’s going to be lots of houses in Africa, too.
G (age 3): Our house. A playground. (pause…incredulous look) Mom, Africa doesn’t look. Africa can’t see!!
M (age 2): Canada.

Why do you think we are going to Africa?
L (age 5): To help people.
G (age 3): So we can see our friends.
M (age 2): Because…(stares)…YES!…(points to the paper I’m writing her responses on) Draw Africa…and an airplane and can you draw me?

What makes you happy about going to Africa?
L (age 5): That I get to see my friends.
G (age 3): You!
M (age 2 ): Paint…and we have new bibs.

What do you want to do in Africa?
L (age 5): I want to play with the kids, play in the rain, and there’s lots of airplanes.
G( age 3): See the elephants and ride on one.
M (age 2): Paint a snake.

How will Africa be different?
L (age 5): There’s an Okapi. There’s not, like, any stores.
G (age 3): Me. (points to leg) I’m white.
M (age 2): Canada.

What will Daddy be doing in Africa?
L (age 5): Working on computers.
G (age 3): I don’t know.
M (age 2): (Stares around room) Talking to a boy about a diamond. (points to my paper again) So, I want you to draw a diamond.

What is a missionary?
L (age 5): Someone who helps people and tells people about God. They use lots of airplanes.
G (age 3): (Totally distracted, raises a toy bat in the air) STAR WARS!
M (age 2): A missionary walks…A missionary can’t walk because a chicken will cross the road!

Hmmm…if the kids have their way, we are in for a crazy first term in Africa!

When Popping Off is Necessary

Posted on: May 10th, 2012 by Gene Jordan | Leave a comment

When I joined MAF in 1977, the training department was teaching pilots how to execute a “flap pop-off.” This technique allowed the airplane to “unstick” itself and get flying at a very slow speed when trying to take-off from an extremely muddy airstrip…a trick that became quite useful when I flew in Ecuador.

The Amazon jungle in eastern Ecuador gets between 24 and 28 FEET of rain a year, and the rain-soaked grass and dirt airstrips often hampered the ability to gain much speed on the ground in order to take off. A flap pop-off was occasionally just the right trick that helped lift the plane into the air when mud didn’t want to let go.

Most airplanes have flaps, small airfoils that increase the lift of the wings at slow speeds. Normally flaps are extended appropriately for take-off, before the take-off run is started. With a flap “pop-off,” the flaps are extended abruptly, immediately increasing the lift of the wing,

(a) and in conjunction with ground effect lift, the airplane was popped right into the air. Hence the name of the “flap pop-off.”

(b) with the airplane popping right into the air. Hence the name of the “flap pop-off.”

One afternoon I was flying family physician Dr. Jack Olinger out of a water-saturated, muddy air strip in Ecuador – and taking off here wasn’t going to be easy. If ever the flap pop-off technique was necessary, this situation was it.

Piloting a Cessna 180, with large, lift-enhancing and manually-controlled flaps, I rolled down the airstrip once to determine just how much speed I might be able to gain on the ground. Once I was satisfied that I could employ the flap pop-off technique safely to get us into the air, we began splashing down the airstrip again.

At just the right moment, I jerked the flap lever up and we jumped into the air. The nose of the airplane had to be carefully lowered to gain speed, without touching down again. I think that this maneuver surprised Dr. Olinger, as it was a non-standard maneuver. As we established a solid climb rate and rose over the jungle trees, Dr. Jack said that “this was so much fun,” and “could we land and do it again?” – a request I politely declined.

In most newer planes, electronically-powered flaps render flap pop-offs useless, but in the Cessna 180 and 185 they sure came in handy at the right time and in the right place!

So Many Reasons to Leave, One Reason to Stay

Posted on: May 9th, 2012 by Jocelyn Frey | Leave a comment

September 26^th 2011 we arrived in Kinshasa, bright eyed and bushy tailed. It feels like I have been here forever and yet also like I just arrived. Next week I will be heading back to Canada to have our first baby!

I am returning home because in the DR Congo, even in the capital city, there is no real way to take care of a mother and baby if anything were to go wrong. So, I am lucky that I have the ability to travel to a country that has safe medical practices; however, my heart hurts for the millions of mothers here that do not have that choice.

Women here are expected to do almost everything. They’re expected to have lots of children, take care of their families, and also go out and make a living. I cannot imagine having that pressure put on me and also having to give birth multiple times in unsafe conditions.

David Burton doing a morning check on one of the MAF airplanes.

It is a very difficult situation here in the Congo, being a country where the culture and country have been destroyed by many wars and much corruption. DR Congo has only truly been out of war for five years, and it still needs so much healing.

MAF has been here in the DRC for the last 50 years, serving many amazing churches and organizations that are working to heal this country. And MAF has stayed true to the calling that God has for us here. It is a very difficult task and we need all the prayer we can get, as the enemy against our souls would love to see us gone from this place. But we have something in us that is much stronger than him. We stand firm on the words of Jesus:

I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” John 16:33

So, as I head home next week and get to speak to my friends and family about the difficulty of life here and how there is so much need sometimes you can feel like you are drowning in it, I will also get to tell them how MAF is a light in a dark place. How we’re committed to staying, because even when things are hard, we know that He has overcome the world. I am so glad that He did and I don’t have to.